Chipman survived Iwo Jima, taught school children American history
One of Clayton Chipman’s prized possessions was a green Marine uniform shirt with a large rip in the back.
It might seem strange to hang on to a bloodstained shirt for more than seven decades but for Chipman, it was a talisman reminding him of the luckiest day of his life.
Chipman was in his ninth day on Iwo Jima — nine days of seeing horrible bloodshed, watching his fellow Marines dying and crawling on his belly to avoid leaving in a body bag — when a burst of shrapnel tore through that shirt and into his shoulder.
He always called it his million-dollar wound because that exploding Japanese artillery round got him off the island. He was 18.
Chipman lived another 73 years, marrying, raising a family and working as an elementary school teacher and principal for Milwaukee Public Schools.
Chipman, 91, of Brookfield, died Wednesday of natural causes.
Born in Milwaukee, Chipman dropped out of West
Allis Central High School at 17 to join the Marines in February 1944. One year later, he was on a boat traveling to Iwo Jima’s black sand beach with the rest of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Division. He looked up from the boat to see American planes crash into the sea, killing the crews.
“It was way beyond fear. I figured out quick if there was a hole from where a shell exploded, there was no land mine there and I crawled into it,” Chipman recalled in 2015 on the 70th anniversary of the famous battle.
Despite his injuries, Chipman’s war wasn’t over. After a few months’ recovery from his shoulder wound, Chipman returned to the fight and was preparing to charge up a hill on Saipan to dislodge several hundred Japanese soldiers unwilling to concede defeat when he heard the news on a radio: World War II was over.
He returned to West Allis in 1946, went to college but dropped out to play professional baseball. Chipman was still a catcher in the minor leagues when his father died in 1950 and he felt he needed to help his mother at home. After earning a degree at Milwaukee State Teachers College in 1952 — plus a master’s degree in education in 1957 at University of Wisconsin-Madison — he was hired by Milwaukee Public Schools.
He was a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher at several schools and later became a principal at Meinecke Ave. and Burbank elementary schools.
“Everybody knew he was patriotic,” said his wife,
Alice. “But they didn’t even know he was a Marine — the teachers, the administrators, the kids. It was never mentioned.”
He retired in 1983 and began his second career, visiting schools to talk about World War II and Iwo Jima and volunteering with the 4th Marine Division Association as executive secretary and later president, bringing the group’s annual convention to Milwaukee in the 1980s. He returned to Iwo Jima to represent the 4th Marines when a monument was erected on the battle’s 40th anniversary.
“After he retired, he devoted the time he would have been working to the military, especially promoting the fellas who died on Iwo Jima,” said Alice Chipman.
The shrapnel wounds from Iwo Jima healed but affected Chipman later in life, his wife said. “He couldn’t raise his arms above his shoulders. He seldom complained about anything.”
Alice Chipman, a pitcher for the Martin Maid team in the West Allis recreational female softball league, met her future husband when her coach asked Chipman to help instruct the team. They were married 65 years, raising a family that includes two daughters, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
He loved talking to student groups about World War II, bringing a piece of living history to middle schoolers and teenagers who were close to his age when he found himself fighting for his life.
“He’d say when I was 18 I was crawling on my belly with machine gun fire over my head and if I lifted my head, which some of the guys did, I would lose my life. That always got their attention,” said Alice Chipman.
In addition to his wife, Alice, survivors include his daughters, Alana Baier and Terri Chipman-Brown.